Djelloul Marbrook

The predicament of a woman who has Tommy tattooed across her tailbone and ends up marrying Jack is not unlike the predicament of a nation run by ideology instead of common sense. According to current vogue in politics, this woman should not flip-flop from Tommy to Jack, even though Tommy is in jail for raping her kid sister.

Even cursory introspection should make one suspicious of such words as forever, always, never, eternally, and all those other melodramatic finalities that we can’t possibly live up to. So the idea of indelibly imprinting anyone’s name on somebody else’s skin reminds me of the adolescent territoriality of nations. It’s one thing to believe in decency, freedom and courage; it’s quite another thing to insist that only you know how to achieve them.

If humankind is not suicidal it will eventually outgrow the obscene desire to brand one another. China will be content with its own ideas and not seek to impose them on others. We will continue to enjoy our democracy and not seek to brand tribal societies with it. We will evangelize by example, not by demonizing others.

The flaw in religions and institutions is that they require The Other, the concept of others being left out. Our desire to belong, to not be left out, creates ideologies that ignite holocausts. The trouble with being right is that somebody else has to be wrong. To fight wars over this is to refuse to grow up. To be in something, somebody has to be out, and the ins are a threat as much as the outs. This is the folly that the mystical threads of institutional religion try to redress by their emphasis on oneness.

There is also fear in this impulse of ours to brand. The young woman fears that Tommy will elude her if she doesn’t keep him under her waistband. Tommy is her chattel, and she is his, so he almost certainly has borne her name to jail with him.

Thought is not a brand, it is an adventure. Identity is not a possession, it is a sensibility. But a consumerist society is inclined to brand to possess, and it is inclined to pronounce what it cannot brand as worthless. This is the message poor Jack must cope with.    —DM